Finding something new in a well-reported story

The Daley family watches Maggie Daley's casket put into the hearse outside Old St. Patrick's church after her funeral mass.

Barbara Brotman

Covering a well-covered story like Maggie Daley’s death is particularly challenging. When I went to the funeral Monday and started talking to mourners, I found that many of them had lovely things to say about Mrs. Daley, but they were things that had been said before in our paper.

I began wondering if some of them might be thinking about the mayor, as I was. To lose a beloved wife after nearly 40 years of a particularly close and loving marriage must be a terrible grief. So I started asking mourners for their thoughts, and indeed, a number of them did say their hearts went out to him.

I decided to make that the focus of my sidebar to the main story. In a sense, it was about what comes next. And it was an opportunity to give a feeling of an event packed with political folks that transcended politics.